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2009

Mooncalf

Digital c-print, 19.5×14

Les quintuplées Dionne

Anniversaire

Funérailles

Melons

Ombres

Communion

Hand-painted digital c-prints, 30×20

Their birth was considered a miracle and the people celebrated these little girls like they were saints. Through our idolatry, they were isolated from the very society they helped define. Five perfect little girls.

The sisters were born in 1934 during the Great Depression in the village of Corbeil, Ontario. Diminutive and frail, they were under the constant surveillance of nurses and the town doctor, Allan Roy Dafoe. They were the first quintuplets to survive birth and so quickly word spread of these five little darlings. The nation and the world were completely charmed. These peasant princesses represented a victory over death, a triumph of the Depression.

A cherished modern myth, along with its deplorable reality, was born.

Eventually the government of Ontario intervened and took over legal guardianship of the Dionnes. The parent’s were deemed unfit and Dr. Dafoe took charge of their wellbeing. They now belonged to the state, to the public.

Soon after, the castle of this myth, “Quintland”, was built. It was here, amidst constant surveillance and sterilized toys, that Cécile, Yvonne, Emilie, Marie and Annette spent their childhoods until the age of 9.

The girls became spokespeople for a great gamut of products and stared in several films.

Three times a day the public was invited to come watch the girls play past their fenced yard through a darkened mesh screen. The girls could not see them, but they heard the hushed voices. They knew they were there, but not why. Over three million visitors shuffled through Quintland.

Their disturbing story helped to define Franco-Ontarian culture yet it speaks of a broader reality still prevalent today. Female objectification is a theme that is inextricably linked to the Dionnes. They were fashioned into little idealized dolls and used to hock Palmolive soap. Their popularity waned as they grew older and it became clear they would not be great beauties. Five boys would never have been so revered. Five charming women would have been a dream. Arguably, this would still be the case today considering reality television and an ever-growing star culture.

The photographs are based on four pre-existing images of the girls during their childhood. Twenty-five life-sized self-portrait cardboard cutouts were created for each vaudevillian, theatrical and superficial scene. This esthetic points to their commodification and the eerie sterility of the settings. They are dressed the same. As always, they are robbed of any identity beyond that which has been prescribed for them, whether by nature or more specifically by the society that surrounds them.

Self-portraits were made in order to insinuate a contemporary relationship between their reality and mine. I take possession of my image by being its author and repossess that of the girls’ to speak for them.

Furthermore, the spectator is challenged by the juxtaposition of morbid and sexual elements, by scenes of innocence or jubilation cast in stagnant forms. We are not sure whether or not the girls, the cutouts, are real. Serious melts into the banal. The viewer becomes an unsolicited voyeur, much like the attendees of the Dionne’s daily visits. However, one of the girls is always seen looking out, silently questioning the observer.

Created during the VIe Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut, these images speak to the difficulties or dichotomies I perceived for the young women living in this beautiful yet confrontational part of the world. Despite the vast amounts of money made available for the games, the scars of the latest 2006 Israël-Hezbollah war were still very apparent. Participants were housed at an immense school campus with weak enrolment, the abandoned desks found throughout bearing testament.